Back in January, we wrote in these pages about the urgent need to address Maine’s housing shortage. This crisis has affected every corner of our state, crossing generational lines and economic divides. It has made it difficult for workers to find a place to live near their jobs, for young families to purchase their first homes, for lower-income folks to stay in their homes and for older Mainers to age in place with dignity, in the communities they know.
The most recent budget enacted by the Legislature invests over $100 million in preventing homelessness, and preserving and producing affordable housing throughout Maine. As co-chairs of the Legislature’s Joint Select Committee on Housing, we have taken a three-pronged approach to finding a path forward. This includes working to alleviate the immediate crisis, investing in housing production and addressing ongoing, systemic problems.
First, we worked to address the dire situation facing thousands of Mainers who are unhoused or at risk of becoming unhoused. Every Mainer deserves a roof over their heads and a safe place to sleep at night. With strong bipartisan support, our committee advanced legislation to create a statewide Housing First Program, a game-changing approach that uses a proven model to ensure chronically unhoused people have access to reliable shelter.
Housing First properties will offer on-site services and resources that address problems contributing to chronic homelessness. These include contact with social workers; treatment for mental illness and physical disabilities, and job training and counseling. Offering these vital services in one place helps people experiencing chronic homelessness achieve long-term stability while reducing costly interactions with our emergency rooms, crisis intervention programs and law enforcement agencies. This approach is not only the right and humane thing to do, it’s the fiscally responsible thing to do.
Our second priority was to prevent folks from losing their housing while accelerating affordable housing production. To do this, we made changes to help maintain existing federal Housing and Urban Development and Department of Agriculture properties as affordable, so long-term residents don’t lose their housing. We passed a bill to help schools identify students whose families are at risk of becoming unhoused and provide them with direct state and federal financial support. We passed legislation to give mobile home park residents the chance to purchase their parks when they are at risk of being sold. And we provided funds to help landlords and developers remediate lead paint contamination and streamline the creation of affordable units in mixed-use developments.
We’re also investing directly in building more affordable housing. Simply put, we have not built enough homes in recent years to meet demand. In the budget, the Legislature appropriated $70 million to boost funding for the Low-Income Housing Tax Credit and the Rural Affordable Rental Housing Program, which will help spur the development of affordable rental housing projects.
Finally, we continued the vital work of changing how Maine plans for land use and development, focusing on smart growth that balances building more housing with preserving greenspace, habitat and historic structures. One new policy will make it easier to renovate historic properties like old mills and shopping malls, which will increase our housing stock while allowing towns to retain their character and focus development where municipal services already exist.
There is no quick fix to Maine’s housing crisis, and these policies alone will not solve the challenges we’re facing overnight. Finding long-term solutions will require continued collaboration with communities across our great state – we all have a role to play in making sure people can live good lives in Maine. We’re proud of the work we did this session, and we’re eager to continue it through the fall and into next year. Our committee has an incredible opportunity to keep addressing these challenges and make lasting changes for everyone in our state.
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